THE INCREDIBLES! (RFD)

("Disney does superheroes" isn't enough to convince me on its own, I'm afraid)

Taking sides: Finding Nemo vs. Home on the Range OR Toy Story vs. Mulan.

Live-action superhero flicks better watch out. And so should superhero comic books for that matter. The bar has been raised considerably (and to be fair, they did things that you could only get away with in a fully-animated feature, and they did 'em really well.)

The score totally rocks an oldschool John Barry sense. Design is immaculate and perfect and it was a ton of fun. Maybe two tons.

The Spider-Man flick is what I'm thinking of here - the origin sequence was fantastic, but when the Green Goblin started attacking, the movie lost a little something, and the climax seemed oddly perfunctory as a result - kind of like watching an hour-long drama, and knowing the killer's going to be revealed in the next 5 minutes because it's almost time for E.R., chop chop. I blame Macy Gray, of course. Even movies like Van Helsing or Underworld are guilty of this - a belabored set-up, shabbily bolstered by crap ass characterization, followed by oodles of special FX and a bunch of supposedly significant plot shenanigans. (In these cases, I blame Kate Beckinsale.)

But, yeah - The Incredibles just hits the ground running. Here's the super strong guy, here's the stretchy girl, here are their kids, and here's what's going on. And it (the story / the characters) doesn't lack for nuance or depth in doing this, either, which is probably the most amazing thing.

I kinda hope Superman does this, too - here's this guy, he's an alien, he can do stuff most folk can't, he likes capes, let's get to it.

It is great. The Fantastic Four movie already looked like it was going to horrible, but The Incredibles just makes it look that much worse because it shows what could have been if Marvel had decided to go in a different, more daring direction.

I doubt that Mr. Fantastic will be able to half of the cool stuff Elastigirl was able to do, he'll probably just have a couple of lame moments where his arms get kind of stretchy.

ONE OF US

HAPPY THOUGHTS

I'm not giving up on the FF yet, but I agree that it has a good deal to prove, and after the Hulk, I'm not as optimistic as I was after, say, Spider-Man.

A plus: the ending was very good, and superhero movies have a tendency to weaken towards the end.

A minus: I've never liked Pixar's character designs for human characters, and this movie is no exception. Since it's the first where the main characters aren't toys, fish, monsters, or bugs, it was something I thought about more over the course of the movie than I would otherwise. Not a big deal, and most of it comes down to my disappointment when the photorealism of the first scene in Toy Story was broken by Andy's not-so-photo not-so-realism.

But then I thought it was cool that the toys in Toy Story looked more real than the humans did. That made a lot of sense in terms of the story/world (not to mention the fact that doing realistic humans with the technology of ten-twelve years ago would be folly.)

This is best movie ever material folx, possibly better than Legally Blonde even.

I'm in such a happy mood. GROUP HUGS, ILC.

But The Incredibles, in the meantime, kicks Spider-Man 2's ass for best superhero movie ever. Wow. Even though an ad for the video game in this week's comics pretty much spoils the villain reveal, I was still mightily entertained throughout. Loved Elastigirl, but Holly Hunter's voice is so rad it's hard not to.
Also, the hair was amazing (except when it got wet).

Which could be kinda cool, actually...

The trailer looked terrible (even the animation seemed kind of off), but then I thought the same thing when I saw the first Monsters Inc. trailer and it turned out being pretty good.

[* MILD SPOILERS ALERT *]

I loved The Incredibles. It reminded me a lot of POWERS or even SLEEPER, where "Supers" are part of everyday life. My favorite part was when Dash was learning what he was capable of on the island. That was so good. And Elastagirl did so many cool things with her ability. I used to think being Elastic was a lame superpower, but she could really do anything. And Frozone not being able to use his ability when he was dehydrated? Brilliant! All of it was wicked good.

It was cute, if somewhat pointless. I know a lot of the time the short films are mainly exercises to test out things like the texture of skin and hair, so I think they were just having fun with the texture of the sheep's coat.

Ahhh. That's pretty interesting. I think Pixar always has a short of some kind before their movies, right?

I just found out that their first post-Disney movie is going to be called Ratatouille. It's going to be about rats. Rats made into stew. Actually, I made that last bit up.

In the parting agreement between Pixar and Disney, it's written that Pixar cannot release a movie within one year of the last movie they do together; they're pushing Cars to have a Fall 2005 release so that they can put out Ratatouille in Fall 2006. I agree with people in that the preview for Cars is bad.

"What's more, the human characters are so real yet not real that many potential moviegoers were creeped out. Pixar was aware of that problem, hence their more cartoon-ish humans in The Incredibles."

That "creeping out" is known as the Uncanny Valley, which I only heard about for the first time at the beginning of the week.

But what it reminded me of was the first 5 minutes or so of Toy Story 2. You know, the sequence where we see Buzz on a solo mission, in the Buzz-verse, fighting aliens, actually being a Space Ranger, and for a few minutes its Pixar doing a pure, tight, beautiful little genre film the Pixar way. Then its all revealed to be a computer game, and its Toy Story 2, and a different sort of genius.

The Incredibles is that 5 minutes. Only about Superheroes. And better. For an hour and a half.

But, weirdly enough, he doesn't mention it in his Polar Express review, and gives the film four stars... I'm sorta expecting to see it, the reviews have been quite positive.

"Toys: Check.
Bugs: Check
Monsters: Check
Fish: Check
Superheroes: Check
Robots? Shit, Dreamworks are doing that.
How about, um, Cars?"

xpost

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdVWv85bwsc&search=incredibles%20jack%20jack

No, but this one can.

That ILE can even question the classicness of Les Incroyables explains why I don't read it anymore.

I'm surprised that ILC is more into it, my comics-love is a large part of the reason why I don't like it, since it means I have low tolerance of "What if superheros... were like a normal family? This is the best idea in the world, why did no-one think of it before?"

The movie had its cliches, particularly in how the various family members' personality traits were defined by their powers, but since that's a cliche present in every single superhero comic I've ever read, it didn't bother me.

I didn't think the movie was earth-shattering or that it broke storytelling paradigms. I did think it was really well-written and really well-executed and massively entertaining.

I'll cut you a check for $100M right now to make this happen. (Please don't cash the check for 20 years.)